QuickViewofUnifier

greetings everyone my name is radiusing I'm director of sources for Gary McNally I'm going to give you a quick overview of unifier Oracle's project controls and facility and real estate management applications before we begin please take a moment to read our safe harbor statement statements we include here are based on our current knowledge and so please be sure to make your own judgments when considering these topics Darmok netting and Associates has been in business since 1989 we provide many services including system implementation managed hosting training for software custom applications system integration we also have developed collaborative products such as project status which provides dashboard and role based tools and as a disabled that are an owned company we can assist you with diversity compliance by providing staffing support resources with expert and mentored personnel familiar with these products we support many of different applications some of which are shown in this tool matrix we're going to focus today on unifier but please consult our website should you be interested in one of these other products so to begin for clients looking for a complete lifecycle management tool Oracle offers unifier as a key product intended to meet this requirement this webinar is intended to show you some of the power and capability found in unifier help you decide if this is a solution for your organization's business requirements today we're going to cover these topics what is unifier a little background on key features what makes unifier compelling the application bundles project controls and facility and real estate management we're going to discuss Primavera contract management and its retirement we're going to talk about unifiers release options and schedule and then I'll conclude with some closing thoughts so one is unifier unifier was acquired by Oracle in 2012 it's an enterprise software solution intended to manage the entire lifecycle of your project or program it's very powerful and customizable unifier can be configured for nearly any kind of management need there are two application bundles project controls and FMR e or facilities in the real estate management and each of those have built-in processes which you can use out of the box or you can modify as needed and you can even build your own processes from scratch unifier provides integration capabilities using the Oracle gateway product to really give you a comprehensive and unified solution combining unifier with Primavera p6 you really can have a complete solution and these two products provide a common core functionality that is found in almost every project and program management system you can plan build and operate from these and while functions may be handled by either p6 or unifier the coordination and integration of these tools really lets you get the right reports to make the right decisions and take the right actions the unifier also can provide an integrated solution where all your participants remote project users or internal groups can access and use camp eration and collaborate this may include p6 and unifier but also will potentially include integrated financial systems middleware tools such as Oracle bi mobile apps like the unifier mobile and even custom applications written for specific instances whether you're an owner or cm firm whether you're a cost or document control staff a finance person or you're a remote project user or vendor all of all of these can collaborate and this environment can support your entire portfolio or program it's really an enterprise solution not a project solution unifiers web-based is cloud hosted or on-premise installation options it has the full spectrum of cost management features funding budget contracts length change management business processes it also has a full-featured document manager and two-way integration between p6 and unifier through gateway it has its own internal report writer as well as harnessing the power of Oracle beyond its workflow driven it has email interaction capabilities and its customizable to suit your needs and requirements now key features it's web-based it's browser and OS neutral it's a it has a mobile app which lets you work offline meaning not connected to the Internet and once you connect back up it will synchronize your data back into unifier the two bundles have built-in packages which you can customize there is a visual workflow design element and there are email routing options a number of them security model is very robust the document manager gives you document on what security down to the document level if you need that now the only element that requires Java is the auto view option in the document manager and it's not really required and you can operate unifier without that and operate completely Java free a unifier has multi-language support if user preference so each user can collaborate in the language of their choice multi currency support so each project can have it currency visual work for I will talk about this more as well but this is a really powerful portion of unifier that lets you design your business processes to match the processes you know follow the project controls bundle comes with many construction business processes already built and you can use these out of the box or you can customize those to suit your needs or you can just start from scratch and build your own also as part of the business process design you build your own input screens so you design the input screen with just the fields you need and with the properties you want you're not walked into any preset data structure or screen design like some of the other applications are combine this with the workflow engine and you really can simplify the end-users job of data entry so the consistency and look and feel of these input screens also can to me make processing these documents for end-users simpler email EFI lets you route your workflow assignments via email and the reviewer can look at documents in the attachment of the email or they can log in to unifier and review the record their you can also enable action buttons in the email that lets the reviewer actually approve or reject a document without them logging into unifier in the first place now they have to have a license but they don't have to actually log in and take an action there they can just do it straight from their email non unifier users can also receive emails from unifier they just cannot take any direct actions on a BP record now the proxy function this lets you cover for another user this is a nice really nice feature this can be set as a permanent assignment like I always cover for Joe or Bill or it can be set for a specific time like PM is on vacation and it's very powerful keeps key documents moving along instead of sitting in somebody's inbox and there's a complete audit trail of these proxy actions now unifier really excels in auditing it has a complete audit trail for every single record it also tracks whether the action is taken by a regular user or a proxy user and it last of all it has a complete user session tracking so you can really see how much an individual user is working in the program and this helps you in training and acceptance because you can track down who's using it or not and then address that unifier mobile so unifier the mobile app currently is for just iOS but they do have the Android version plans it's currently English language only as I mentioned earlier it does have an offline functionality that lets you auto sync when can when you're connected back to the Internet for me this is a big feature because if you're in the field out in the middle of nowhere you can add documents you can record information and have that information logged into unifier once you're connected to the Internet so you can do just about anything you can respond to tasks you can view business process logs you can create new business process records like RFI's or daily reports or change orders you can also approve documents you can take photos and attach images or videos to a business process record most business processes can be enabled for this mobile app but you have the choice to decide whether you want it there or not the mobile app navigation is really simple the home screen can be easily configured by the user the task list as a filter function lets you get quickly to documents you want to work on log lists have clear action indicators so you know which records are done in which are pending or late you can attach photos videos taken on your device you can even record an audio narration and these are uploaded and attached to the BP record in unifier so this is very valuable for field reports observe a problem take a photo the photos worth a thousand words etc also when you're creating an entry in the field such as a work activity and you want to type out your description you can use the iPhone microphone to dictate the input field to me this is a time-saver I mean I'm not very good at those little small keyboards on the iPhone data integration so unifier typically uses Oracle gateway for these integrations with p6 and unifier you don't need a gateway license it's included as part of the operation integration to other software such as financial systems might require Gateway licensing other integration options could include creating a custom application just accessing unifier via Web Services and you can also use an import/export functionality that's right in the application itself so now let's take a look at the first bundle the project controls this includes work flow or non work flow driven processes including all the cost elements like budgets and commitments and changes document control documents like RFI's and field reports and in both you can create whatever processes you need if they're not there the document manager is a fully secure tool for managing all your attached documents navigation is very simple there are multiple ways to get to information just start click on the search and just start typing a project number or title hierarchical not navigation unlimited tabs at the top you can create bookmarks and favorites also the dashboards are configurable and these can be printed out you can check the workflow status of any document from your home screen or your to-do list your home screen included the action items just by clicking on the workflow icon and you'll see not only the description of who's done what but you'll also see the visual display of which step your head cost tracking can be both program and project level and will roll up through your hierarchy you can define cashflow curves to view and you can manage all your company and project costs in unifier funding budget commits actuals and changes ok the fMRI facilities real estate this is the second application bundle and this includes some specialty applications like asset tracking preventive maintenance material management maintenance on real-estate features include things like lease management and space planning utilities management includes key tracking for things like emissions and carbon footprint and sustainability and LEED certification so these are kind of tude into the facility and real estate components not everyone will use these and this is one of the reasons they have split the application bundles into those two options here's a kind of an example of how the preventative maintenance works I create an asset list these are added to my PM or a preventative maintenance book and then when I perform maintenance these items are tracked back to the PM book and are tracked according to what the PM book budgets are versus what my actual expenditures are the PM book is template driven so each item you build in the detail includes detailed maintenance requirements and actions so if I'm dealing with a you know HVAC unit it requires these following maintenance which may be periodic either daily monthly weekly or at certain time periods like at you know 100,000 hours deccan the FM re bundle also can apply to your entire program and can be organized by region campus building you decide which of these how you want to track them and from here all your information can enroll up across your entire organization okay now a little bit about contract management as a lot of you know unifier and contract management have a lot of similar functions Primavera contract management or PCM has reached its end of support which means if Oracle is not issuing new releases or patches many of the features and unifier are elements that were long asked for by PCM users there's a lot that similar and some that's different as those familiar with PCM have probably observed here there's there's no direct data migration provided from Oracle between these two applications but there are options there would be the ability to do a custom data migration during the implementation of unifier we could assist building a data mapping that brings your PCM data over you can archive your PCM data and start fresh in unifier we do have a white paper that's available on our website for PCM closeout for this second option so you may want to check that out if you're interested okay unifier release options and schedule unifiers offered both as an on-premise perpetual license or as a Oracle cloud subscription license each release is numbered with the year and number of its release so the first or unifier release issued earlier this year 2017 would be 17.1 Oracle issues new releases for the cloud versions in the first quarter of the year and an on-premise or perpetual release versions are typically issued in the second half of the year to me one of the potential benefits of this for an on-premise perpetual user is that many of the issues encountered in early release are all worked out by the time the on prem releases issues implementation recommendations and this is if you're building unifier from the ground up it's really important you use care when you're implementing it we've always used a phased implementation approach for all of our software whether it's unifier or contract manager or p6 but this is really important with unifier design you have to be tested and validated before production use this can increase the timeit's that's required to build it out compared to a product that comes pre-built what contract management but the end result is you get what you want not you settle for something and as mentioned before once you design the processes it's my opinion that using it is a lot easier than a lot of the other tools because you're really focusing in what the end user needs to do so closing thoughts you know we continue to look for best solutions for any given point you know our by word is solutions with simple work and that's long than our standard unifier really offers many features it's my opinion it really could be a compelling choice for many clients its flexibility and design really has many benefits and the consistent interface simplifies the training and assures end user acceptance so if you're really looking for a powerful enterprise management solution unifier may very well be the product for you but please contact us if you have any questions or want more information our email is listed below and our website dr McNally comm has many other resources that you may find valuable request to be added to our mailing list if you aren't already so that you can be notified of our upcoming webinars tech tips and events and thanks very much for taking this time I hope this has been helpful and information informational for you you

Channel: DRMcNattyAssociates

Views: 236

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Oracle, Oracle Primavera Unifier, Complete Lifecycle, Management Tool

Id: jP0CxXozRZc

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 26 2017